Video Q&A: The Economist’s Paul Rossi on Mobile and Marketing ServicesManaging Director and EVP weighs in on the changing landscape.

Like many magazine publishers, The Economist is transitioning from a legacy brand to a multi-platform media company. The reasons are varied, and one can see from the group’s portfolio that its digital footprint is now just as important as any hardcopy publication.

The brand averages 7.5 million monthly visitors from North America and its global digital subscriber base now reaches close to 120,000, of which 56,000 are from the North American market. In social media, the group is also gaining traction with more than 1.4 million Facebook fans, 2.8 million-plus Twitter followers, over 2.6 million Google+ fans and more than 30,000 LinkedIn members.

Print, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. The Economist’s North American edition saw a decrease in its total paid, verified and analyzed non-paid circulation by 0.5 percent to 840,719 for the six-month period that ended on December 31, 2012, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. While total circ is down, the number of subscriptions actually increased by 0.6 percent, with the slide coming from the newsstand (-16.1 percent), like it has done for many publishers.